The following is an abstract of the talk Hugh Wilson will be giving to us at our AGM on 8th June 2011.
Two major waves of human colonisation, Polynesian and European, stripped Banks Peninsula of its ancient forests and savaged its wildlife. A thousand years ago, Banks Peninsula was forested from side to side and from top to bottom. By 1900, less than one percent of the old growth forest remained, and only about half of the terrestrial bird species survived.
Nevertheless, Nature is clearly eager to restore the native ecosystems, with or without human assistance. By 2000, some sixteen percent of the Peninsula’s roughly 100,000 ha was again under native forest canopy through natural regeneration, and many bird populations were thriving, against numerous odds. Many initiatives now are underway to foster this restoration.
In this lecture, Hugh will give a background to what has happened on Banks Peninsula over the last millennium, and what is happening now. He will refer to several restoration projects, with various management philosophies, but will focus on the project in which he is most intimately involved, Hinewai Reserve, in the southeast corner of the Peninsula, east of Akaroa.
Hinewai is now 1,230 ha of regenerating native forest and remnants of old-growth forest, owned and managed privately by the Maurice White Native Forest Trust. It is freely open to the public, as if were a mini-National Park on the doorstep of Akaroa, and in the backyard of Christchurch.
